You own your website when the contract says ownership passes to you, the domain is registered in your name, and you can take your code and content with you if you leave. Paying for a website doesn't, on its own, make it yours. The time to settle this is before you sign, with a handful of plain questions.
When does the website become yours?
In the UK, the person or company that creates a design or writes code usually owns the copyright in it, and transferring that copyright has to be done in writing. Paying the invoice doesn't, by itself, transfer it. So the contract should say, in plain words, that ownership passes to you, and when.
Ask:
- When does ownership pass to me? On final payment, or at some other point?
- Is it ownership, or a licence to use the site for as long as I keep paying?
- Which parts aren't covered — fonts, stock photos, plugins, themes — and what licences come with them?
Third-party parts are normal. A font or a stock photo is usually licensed rather than owned. What matters is that the licence covers how you use it, and carries on if you change supplier.
This isn't legal advice. If your website is central to your business, it's worth having a solicitor read the contract before you sign.
Is the domain in your name?
Your domain — yourbusiness.co.uk — is the single most important thing to own outright. It's where your website lives, and usually where your email lives too. Whoever controls the domain controls where both of them point.
Check that:
- you or your company is the registrant, not the designer or their agency
- you have your own login to the registrar (the company the domain is registered with), or can get one
- renewal is set up so it can't lapse quietly, and you know who pays and who gets the reminders
It's fine for a designer to manage the domain day to day. It just needs to be yours on paper, with a way in that doesn't depend on them.
Hosting, and what you pay for each month
Hosting is the computer your website lives on. Somebody pays for it, keeps it updated and fixes it when something breaks. Ask:
- Is hosting included in a monthly fee, or billed separately?
- What else does the fee cover — security certificate, backups, updates, monitoring?
- If the site goes down, how quickly is it fixed?
- If I stop paying the monthly fee, does the site go offline, and can I move it somewhere else?
The last question matters most. A monthly plan that looks after your site is a service. A monthly plan that's the only thing keeping your site in existence is a different arrangement, and you should know which one you're signing up to.
Platform lock-in
Some websites can only live on the platform they were built on. Hosted website builders are quick and inexpensive to start with, but you usually can't take the design with you. You can export some content, such as blog posts or product lists, and then rebuild elsewhere.
Online shop platforms work in a similar way: the shop runs on the platform, while your products, customers and orders can be exported. That applies to shops we build too. They run on Shopify, which looks after hosting and security, and you pay Shopify's own monthly plan directly, with the shop set up in your name.
None of this is a reason to avoid a platform. It's a reason to know, before you start, what you'd be able to take with you. Ask:
- What is the site built on?
- If I leave, what can I take — code, content, images — and in what form?
- Will it run anywhere else, or only here?
Access now, and a way out later
You should be able to get at your own words, photos and data whenever you like, not only when the relationship ends. Make sure you have:
- copies of all your original photos and logo files
- a way to change your own text, or a clear process for asking
- your analytics and Google Search Console set up under your own Google account, with the designer added as a user
- your Google Business Profile owned by you
Then ask the designer to walk you through leaving, before you've even started:
- How would I move the domain? For .uk domains this is a tag change; for most others it's an authorisation code.
- Would I get the code files, and instructions to set them up somewhere else?
- Is there an exit fee, and how much notice do I give?
A good answer is specific and in writing. "We'll sort it out if it comes to that" is worth pressing on.
Where we come in
With us, ownership of the agreed original work passes to you once the final payment is made. Third-party fonts, software and stock photos keep their own licences, and anything you owned before the project, from your logo to your accounts, stays yours and is never held back. Hosting, the security certificate, backups, updates and monitoring are included on every monthly plan — or, if you'd rather look after it yourself, choose a handover before the build starts and you get the code files, a written setup guide, and the accounts, training and support set out in your scope. You can compare the options on our pricing page.